Information and Knowledge Management using ArcGIS ModelBuilder

4.3 Goals at the project level
Monika Magnusson and Marie-Therese Christiansson
In the project plan for the eService project, only four goals are explicit; see Table 3. However, a number
of tasks or “issues that must be solved” are provided in the document. Among the mentioned
tasks are that all eServices within the municipality need to be documented and categorised in a service
catalogue and that a My Page solution, where the citizens and businesses can see all their errands
and personal information, should be created.
Table 3: Goals at the project level (Karlstad kommun, 2008b)
Goal
level &
no.
Goal statement Goal
type
PG1 Safe and reliable login – for all citizens(older than 15 years) and com- Soft
panies in the municipality
goal
PG2 Stored information in the Meta catalogue about person and company Hard
information must be 100% correct. A quality check must be done to
guarantee this.
goal
PG3 60% of all paper forms should be digital Hard
goal
PG4 75% of all errands should be done through Internet (if it is possible to Hard
use Internet for that kind of errand) – “My Account/My Page” will be an
important part to fulfil these requirements
goal
PG5 35 new eServices should be created before the end of 2011 Hard
goal
Overall
goal
quality
Contributes to
MG5
MG1, PG1
MG4
PG4, MG1
Unclear whether there is an overall project goal and how the goals contribute to each other (unclear
goal structure). High alignment with municipal goals (MG1, MG3 & MG4) although PG1 is identical
to MG5 and PG5 is identical to parts of MG1. PG4 has to wide a scope and is therefore difficult to
achieve within the project. Also PG5 is difficult to achieve within the project as it is the different
departments, not the project, that decide if they want to develop eServices (c.p. Morasky’s statement
that goals should focus on the receiving system). Moreover, PG4 contain both goal (end) and
task (mean). Also PG2, contain both goal and task. PG1, PG3 and also PG5 to some extent, lack
tasks to fulfil them.
4.4 Goal alignment in practice – a goal model
In Table 1 to 3 alignments between goals at different levels are analyzed. Another way to analyze
goals and clarify goal dependencies is by structuring them into goal models. The graphical representation
enables a prompt overview of goals as a whole. A goal model over the goals at the municipal
and the project level is shown in Figure 3. As shown in the figure, some goals, such as PG1 and PG3
lack explicit tasks or a plan to fulfil them in the studied documents. Some of the goal statements are
shortened to increase the readability. The municipal actions plan is here seen as a task to fulfil goals
at national level, while the eService project is stated as a task in the municipality’s local actions plan
for eGovernment. The notation from Bleistein et al. (2006a) has been extended with a symbol for ‘levels’
to facilitate analysis of goals at different levels. Also a symbol for detecting identical goals was
included; see the symbol legend in Figure 3.
5. Conclusions
5.1 Findings
The purpose of this study is to investigate how goal modelling can be utilized to improve eService
development in government by serving as a tool for evaluation. According to the case study, goal
modelling facilitates an intentional and functional decomposition of goals. The ‘logical’ and complex
chain of goals and means, from transnational to local level, may be clarified and improved. Ideally
goals at lower levels are constructed to specify and contribute to goals at higher levels. Our study
showed that the alignment between goals at different organizational levels in some cases where good
but for other goals were weak or invisible. Overall, relatively few references were made to goals at
superior levels in the studied documents. Goal modelling and analysis is thus valuable for identifying
a lack of alignment between multi-level goals.
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